Repeated runs are now way more reliable and comfortable
How a run-config mechanic eliminated copy-paste between deploy sessions and made repeated cartridge runs faster and more consistent.
Trying to break the deployments and forcing the deploy cartridge into a ROLLBACK situation required multiple attempts. During the repeated runs I pasted the content of phase-1.md, written by the previous SHAPE phase, into the context, so that I wouldn’t have to go through the initial interview process. That worked well, but still felt somewhat inconvenient. I had to come up with an idea, if a cartridge is likely to be run repeatedly against the same target.
You may ask yourself why I didn’t just tell FRAME to read the existing phase-1.md at the start. Fair question, simple answer: It’s gone when /frame load runs. The archive folder is wiped at load time, so you always start with a clean sheet and don’t have FRAME read archive files from a previous run after a /clear mid-session. But it meant something else had to handle reuse.
In the end I decided for an optional ‘Run config’ mode, defined on cartridge level, but orchestrated by the engine. Cartridges that are likely to be run repeatedly declare Run config: supported in their README. At CLOSE, the engine will ask you whether to save SHAPE values to .frame/run-config.md. On the next /frame load, the engine detects the file, verifies the Cartridge: field matches, and asks you whether to load it. You can accept, skip, or start fresh. No more copy&paste.
Once you have set up the run-config for a repeating run, things get a lot more comfortable and you can be sure that you don’t cause run variations because you answered slightly differently than before.
The file is plain text and editable. If some values stay fixed across runs but others change, remove the moving parts. SHAPE will use what’s in the file and ask only for what’s missing. A blog-writing cartridge could store tone, audience and general context permanently, and ask only for the topic and angle each time.
I still have to go through all the cartridges and decide which ones should support run-config, but besides deploy, blog-writing is an obvious candidate.